Thursday, September 20, 2007

Back From Berlin; Getting Into Books

Apologies for the long hiatus since my last post - due, please believe me, to business, rather than laziness. The English tribe has been in Berlin - wonderful city of clean streets, art and cake:

O, J and A have been inspecting one of the last remnants of the wall at the "East Side Gallery":

Much of the paining remains but the surface is flaking away and being obscured by recent graffitti. This piece has survived quite well:

Apart from seeing the sights and eating wonderful cake, there was work to be done, in this case designs for a bookplate. Wherever I am, I always find a cafe to be an excellent place to work.

Home - to find a packet from Chris Daunt, Blockmaker, who supplies all of my engraving blocks. But why do I need all of these?

And thats not all - fresh supplies of various Zerkall papers have arrived from John Purcell Papers:In another drawer are beautiful hand-marbled papers:

And luscious patterned papers by Victoria Hall of Norwich:

I've also been practicing my bookbinding skills:

The large book is a full-sized "mock-up" of a book to showcase some of my engraved bookplates.

Although I am still working of a few commissions, I am concentrating on the design, printing and binding of two handmade books, to be published in small editions by my own Oak Apple Press. This has been a long-term aim of mine and I am working hard to get them ready for the UK Fine Press Fair at Oxford on November 3rd and 4th.

Some of the bookplates will be printed onto the pages. The larger ones will be printed separately and then pasted onto pages of a different colour. I have been printing these separate plates over the past few days, hoping to get them all done by the end of the week. I'll keep you posted.